a weary world rejoices

If you happen to peek into our house today, you’ll find a little girl running around, hair flying, and whispering, “Christmas, Christmas,” to herself. You might also find her dressed up in a satin cape with an embroidery hoop on her head, announcing, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be for all people…Today in the city of David…of Bethle…I mean, what’s that word again?”

Indeed, cuteness abounds this Christmas Eve.

Flurry also abounds; my sisters (yes, even the little one) and I are dancing in the Christmas Eve service at church tonight, and there are various Christmas-related things yet to be done.

So no long post today; just a few excellent articles you might enjoy.

First off is a stop at GirlTalk as they remind us what Christmas really is: pure faithfulness, pure love, and the absolute proof that we can trust God to come through on his promises.

“The wonder of Christmas morning is not the pile of presents that await us. It’s not the family and friends that have gathered with us to celebrate. It’s not the lengthy list of blessings we can recount from the year prior. Those are all tremendous aspects of the holiday, but the inestimable treasure is that we are loved with an intensity that defies our capacity to comprehend by the One who is intrinsically love.” (Click here to read the whole thing)

And I have one last article for ya before I sign off for Christmas – a page from Relevant Magazine, called “A Weary World Rejoices“. As a man who has been broken by his wife’s two miscarriages, he finds hope again in a healthy birth – and then understands the promise of Christmas. (HT: Boundless)

“I understand this year for the first time why a birth can be celebrated; why the farmers and prophets and businessmen back when Jesus was born were brought to their knees on his birthday. They were broken, run down and in real need of redemption that had been promised for thousands of years. And so Jesus’ birth was much more than the start of something … it was the end of a long line of waiting.”